Do the “Anointed” have a “beautiful minds” or “bicameral minds?”
As you sit here quietly reading this post you are probably not aware that I’m about to expose you to an intellectual shock. Using published research material from perhaps one of the ten most important books in the 20th century; I have come to the conclusion that the “Anointed” or 144,000, sometimes known as the “Faithful and Discrete Slave” have only marginal consciousness and frequently experience auditory hallucinations. I further support this bold hypothesis by drawing on personal experience with members of the Jehovah’s Witness anointed class and conversations with ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses on this discussion board and others.
Due to time demands, I support my arguments heavily using published information from the resource mentioned below, but only quoting relevant material. I provide the links and offer encouragement to do additional reading if you find the material of value.
Princeton University psychologist Julian Jaynes published a very important book back when the Witnesses expected the world to end in the mid 1970’s. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind surprised the psychological community by speculating that until late in the second millennium B.C. men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of gods.
At the heart of this book is the revolutionary idea that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but is a learned process brought into being out of an earlier hallucinatory mentality by cataclysm and catastrophe only 3000 years ago and still developing.
Commentary by John Flint and Eric Savage (URL: http://www.neo-tech.com/discovery/nt3.html)
The bicameral mind is a human mind functioning in a particular, unconscious mode or manner...in the manner intended by nature. While the bicameral mind[ 1 ] exists in all people, it can be controlled or dominated by a special mode of consciousness developed not through mother nature but volitionally by each individual being. That mind control or domination can be exercised by an individual over himself and others. Or an individual can allow that mode of consciousness in others to control or dominate his or her bicameral mind.The major components of Jaynes's discovery are:The bicameral mind (two-chamber mind) is one that functions as an unconscious, two-step process. Automatic reactions and thoughts originate in the right hemisphere of the brain and are transmitted to the left hemisphere as instructions to be acted upon. The bicameral functioning is nature's automatic, learned mode of response without regard to conscious thinking. By contrast, man-made consciousness functions through a deliberate, volitional thought process that is independent of nature's bicameral thought process.
Until approximately 3000 years ago, man's brain functioned entirely in nature's automatic bicameral mode. But the automatic bicameral mind became inadequate to handle the mounting problems as societies became more complex. To survive, man was forced to invent a new way of thinking -- a new mode called consciousness that could solve infinitely more complex problems. That consciousness mode involved his newly discovered powers of introspection. His thinking process was further enhanced by new thoughts and insights created by comparisons done through metaphors and analogs.
Consciousness allows a person to make his or her own decisions rather than relying on nature's bicameral process that automatically follows learned customs, traditional rules, and external "authorities". Metaphors and analogs increase a person's range and power of thinking infinitely beyond nature's range. Yet, despite the great advantages in using the man-invented mode of thinking, most people today depend to various degrees on their automatic bicameral mentality and external "authorities" to make their decisions for them.
That bicameral mentality lures people into searching for "sure-thing" guidance from "higher authorities", rather than using their own consciousness for making decisions and determining their actions. Thus, in their search for prepackaged truth and automatic guidance, people seek "higher authorities": religion, politics, true-believer movements, leaders, gurus, cults, astrology, fads, drugs, feelings, and even forms of poetry, music, medicine, nutrition, and psychology. The bicameral mind seeks outside sources that will tell it how to think and act. ...Anyone can exploit the automatic bicameral mind in others by setting up "authorities" for influencing or controlling that bicameral mentality seeking external guidance.
All civilizations before 1000 B.C. -- such as Assyria, Babylonia, Mesopotamia, pharaonic Egypt -- were built, inhabited, and ruled by nonconscious people.There is much more material on this website to explore but I diverge here and use the preceding material to suggest that the FDS and anointed ones in the Jehovah’s Witnesses have brains that have not evolved as efficiently as the masses or perhaps are more prone to neurobiological factors that wire their brains differently. It has been my personal experience that every person I have met from the anointed class has heard voices; was deeply driven into the “God-authority” trip, and was mystical.Ancient writings such as the Iliad and the early books of the Old Testament were composed by nonconscious minds that automatically recorded and objectively reported both real and imagined events. The transition to subjective and introspective writings of the conscious mind occurred in later works such as the Odyssey and the newer books of the Old Testament.
Ancient people learned to speak, read, write, as well as carry out daily life, work, and the professions all while remaining nonconscious throughout their lives. Being nonconscious, they never experienced guilt, never practiced deceit, and were not responsible for their actions. They, like any other animal, had no concept of guilt, deception, evil, justice, philosophy, history, or the future. They could not introspect and had no internal idea of themselves. They had no subjective sense of time or space and had no memories as we know them. They were nonconscious and innocent. They were guided by "voices" or strong impressions in their bicameral minds -- nonconscious minds structured for nature's automatic survival.
The development of human consciousness began about 3000 years ago when the automatic bicameral mind began breaking down under the mounting stresses of its inadequacy to find workable solutions in increasingly complex societies. The hallucinated voices became more and more confused, contradictory, and destructive.
Man was forced to invent and develop consciousness in order to survive as his hallucinating voices no longer provided adequate guidance for survival.
Today, after 3000 years, most people retain remnants of the bicameral guidance system in the form of mysticism and the desire for external authority.
Except for schizophrenics, people today no longer hallucinate the voices that guided bicameral man. Yet, most people are at least partly influenced and are sometimes driven by the remnants of the bicameral mind as they seek, to varying degrees, automatic guidance from the mystical "voices" of others -- from the commanding voices of false external "authorities".
Religions and governments are rooted in the nonconscious bicameral mind that is obedient to the "voices" of external "authorities" -- obedient to the voice of "God", gods, rulers, and leaders.
The discovery that consciousness was never a part of nature's evolutionary scheme (but was invented by man) eliminates the missing-link in human evolution.
Essentially all religious and most political ideas today survive through those vestiges of the obsolete bicameral mind. The bicameral mind seeks omniscient truth and automatic guidance from external "authorities" such as political or spiritual leaders -- or other "authoritarian" sources such as manifested in idols, astrologers, gurus. Likewise, politicians, lawyers, psychiatrists, psychologists, professors, doctors, journalists and TV anchormen become "authoritarian voices".
Perhaps your experience was different, but on this site we have seen posts from several people who claim they were of the anointed class (You Know, Aguest) and you can tell by reading their posts that they don’t come from the same “mental space” as most of us do. Is it biological? I think it could have a strong neurochemical or neuropsychological link. After all, we can create auditory hallucinations and even visual hallucinations in the medical labs with simple equipment.
This doesn’t mean they are insane, psychotic, mentally ill, or what ever negative label you want to place on them, but it does suggest that they process reality differently from the rest of us. Knowing that they think differently is perhaps one of the clues about why things are the way they are in the organization.
Kind Regards,
Skipper